


A Day in the Serenity Daycare Center

by YukiRiikus_Reading_Room



Category: Firefly
Genre: Cute Kids, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gina Torres's Headcannon, Kid Fic, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room/pseuds/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing on Serenity was ever the same once they made room for two very special little girls on board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Serenity Daycare Center

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this request: Gina Torres’ headcanon for Firefly was that Zoe and Wash would have a redheaded, wiry-haired child with freckles, and Jayne would babysit and Zoe and Jayne would argue over who would teach the kid about guns. Write that. (Bonus for Kaylee and Simon's kid, and if they're both girls)

“Kira, you get back here good and proper so I can show you the loading mechanism on Vira!”

“Jayne Cobb, how many times do I have to tell you that you’re not showing my six year old how to work that machine?” Zoe snapped, swooping her daughter up in her arms as she tried to run past to her ‘Unca Jayne’. “I already told you, Vira will have to wait until she’s at least… ten.”

“More like fifteen, if you want my opinion.” Wash said, sighing when neither of them acknowledged his vote. “Which, apparently, you don’t.”

“If it’s any kind of consolation, I don’t want little Willow growing up with a gun in her hand either.” Simon said quietly, shifting his three year old daughter in his arms. Kaylee smiled as she walked by him to get her cup of tea off the counter, kissing his forehead as she passed. 

“Kids need to know how to defend themselves. ‘Sides, if you start ‘em young they pick it up faster, ain’t that right Zoe?” Jane asked, smirking when Zoe nodded in agreement.

“With the kind of lives we lead, it might be for the best if the kid knows her way around a gun in a tight spot.” Mal said, raising an eyebrow when Inara scoffed at him. “What? Imagine something happens to her parents, and some nasty folk come to kidnap her? I think it’s good Zoe’s preparing her for the worst just in case.”

“Unca Simon!” Kira said excitedly, pulling at the doctor’s sleeve. “Can I hold WIllow?”

“Only if you give that gun back to your mother first.” 

“Otay!” 

“What a way for a child to grow up, huh?” Wash asked, Inara smiling and shaking her head as Kira took a hold of Willow smiling brightly down at the sleeping girl. “They’ll be two of the only kids this side of the verse to grow up on the ABC’s of gun control.” 

Occasionally, Captain Malcolm Reynolds thought back nostalgically to the days before his ship was crawling with fugitives, and how quiet things had been. Then, of course, he’d fallen into the swing of things, gotten even better at avoiding the Alliance than he had been before, and things like hiding the siblings in storage units or Wash having to pull scary crazy moves with Serenity that didn’t seem logically possible to avoid capture or detection became routine. Things began to feel normal again, or as normal as his life had ever been living on a spaceship.

Then came the children.

Suddenly, he found himself wishing for the days when his biggest concerns had been having two wanted criminals aboard his vessel. Now, nothing felt like a normal day. 

On Inara’s suggestion – when she found out he’d gone through with it, she admitted it had mostly been a joke – he’d started writing down a captain’s log detailing his day. Besides being a way to combat stress, it quickly became something that all the adults on board got into helping with as a way of detailing the growth and lives of Kira and Willow. He’d found Wash sitting more than once holding the book tightly to his chest with tears in his eyes, admitting to Mal that sometimes it was the only thing keeping him sane from all the worry he had that something would happen to his daughter, and that knowing there would be some record that she had existed and graced their lives with her presence was an enormous comfort.

Generally, entries went something like this: 

 

December 10th – 

6 am: Serenity went off course with a lurch. Upon rushing to the bridge, it was to find Wash asleep in his chair with a manically giggling Kira in his lap fiddling with the controls. Mal ‘suggested’ Wash not bring his daughter onto the bridge with him anymore; the lurching woke Willow, who proceeded to scream for half an hour until River welded a pair of metal boots to the ceiling and hung Willow upside down from the ceiling. 

9:30 am: The girls demanded a snack; Simon unthinkingly allowed them to eat all of Kaylee’s strawberries. Kaylee had been shouting about how her husband is unthinking and will be sleeping in the kitchen tonight while throwing wrenches at his head ever since.

11am: Neither will admit to it, but one of the girls put chewing gum in Shepard Book’s hair while he was napping. River had a meltdown when he had to pull his hair down for Inara to cut the gum out. Thinking it was a game, Kira and Willow hid with her in one of the storage units and giggled until Book put his hair away.

Noon: Landed in Mirthan Valley to meet at a drop point; Willow snuck aboard the Mule and wasn’t found until Zoe, Mal, and Jayne were already at the drop sight with the goods. Turns out Bentley really likes kids. Gave us a discount, and gave Willow a sucker.

1 pm: Inara took the girls into town to buy them toys while their parents took some well deserved naps. Jayne accompanied the children playing boy guard.

3pm: The kids, Inara, and Jayne returned. Their parents were thrilled to see them playing happily with their jump ropes and dolls, thought Simon about had a heart attack when Willow showed him the hot pink and glitter hand gun Jayne had bought her. Simon calmed down when his daughter shot him and he realized it was a water gun. Everyone was exceptionally proud of Jayne for not buying her a real gun at her age.

5 pm: Dinner time. Tonight, the food throwing was held to a minimum, especially after Zoe threatened to stab Jayne while he slept if he didn’t stop throwing rolls at her daughter after one hit her in the eye and she started crying. Willow hugged Kira and kissed her forehead, telling her it was okay because her Daddy was a doctor and could make her eye stop hurting.

6 pm: Kaylee, Book, Wash, Mal, and Zoe attempt to teach Kira how to play basketball in the deck while River teaches Willow how to dance. Willow then proceeds to steal the ball, and pirouettes away from them until the adults finally have to give up and go back to their posts. 

8 pm: Inara gathered everyone in the cafeteria and announced that she was pregnant. Mal was ecstatic about being a father, and everyone clapped. Willow and Kira politely asked Inara to ‘please have a boy so they could have a brother’. No one had the heard to explain to them that that wasn’t how it worked. River pulled a cake out of the oven a second later saying she’d had a feeling something good would happen that would require celebrating, and no one questioned her. After cake, Kira and Willow were put to bed.

10 pm: Willow had a nightmare about swallowing bugs and woke half the ship crying. Kira asked her parents if she could have a slumber party with Willow in her bunk, and they agreed. They fell asleep cuddling; there were no more nightmares that night.


End file.
